Universal Technology
Jump Drives Jump dives use the immense power of a ship's fusion reactor, to force massive amounts of energy through the jump coils, destroying the fabric of space, and opening a temporary worm hole, that takes you to your desired location. The resonance temporarily vibrates the drive coils, preventing you from jumping within a given time. Stealth Fields Stealth Fields warp light around the hull of the ship making the ship invisible. Scanners can locate a ship through a stealth frield if the scan is done constantly and if it is close enough. The higher tech the species is, the more effective the stealth field around the ship is. Shield Emitters Dampening Fields Dampening Fields prevent a ship from forming a jump wormhole to jump away. The field varies in size, sometimes encasing several light minutes or entire systems. Depending on the strength of the local area of the dampening field, a ship can jump away inside of the field if they are near the "edge" of the field. More powerful dampening fields wont allow ships to even attempt to jump while inside it. If they somehow manage to do so the jump drives tear the ship apart thus destroying it. The dampening fields can be tuned towards a specific type of drive signature allowing the host ship to jump away need be however that is unlikely because both ships can use dampening fields forcing the enemy to either run away or stay in fight. Weapons Railguns Railguns utilise magnetic induction to accelerate metal darts to relativistic speeds. This results in rail guns being capable of punching through a ship from bow to stern (if the gun is powerful enough), even a glancing blow to a ships hull can structurally snap its spine or cause it to spin wildly out of control. Railguns are also very useful in precision planetary bombardment as they can even destroy deep well-armoured bunkers. The typical anti Starship railgun is a little bit bigger than a lipstick tube. Railguns although powerful do have a few setbacks: Heavier Railguns need to be used sparingly for orbital bombardment because the force of impact from their rounds can launch masses of surface practicals into the atmosphere which can have detrimental effects on the local ecosystems and can induce a greenhouse effect. For this reason they are often regulated by the "Rules". Railgun effectiveness can be mitigated by energy shielding although this does have a massive power cost so most ships cannot sustain a constant barrage. This leads to the tactic of using MASERs to knock out shields or at least weaken them before the use of railguns. MASER emitters Maser is an acronym for "Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation" which is a system of producing coherent (as in having the same or fixed phase) electromagnetic waves through amplification by stimulated emission from atoms that have been induced into an excited energy state. While information on Maser emitter technology as a weapons system is not thoroughly explained, its likely that they operate very similarly to a Lasers emitter however likely have a higher capacity for destructive purposes due to their variable yield. Types include: * Ship-Mounted Cannons * Ground-to-Orbit Projectors * Point-Defence Cannons Missiles Terrestrial Zinger Missiles These are advanced surface-to-air, air-to-air missiles. They have more in common with UAV drones or cruise missiles than traditional Stinger Missiles. Zingers can be deployed in many ways from man-portable launchers to dropships or even dropped off of a sufficiently high building. after being launched Zingers can deploy wings and ramscoop in order to loiter in the area for long periods of time if no targets are found to set a trap or provide limited reconnaissance. Zingers are equipped with a stealth field generator to avoid detection and to deceive enemy sensors as well as a nose-mounted shield emitter to provide partial protection against point-defences and limited shield/armour penetration. Ship Killer Missiles These are in essence massive space-based zinger missiles with much higher yield warheads, bigger shield emitters, stealth field generators and more advanced sensors allowing Ship killer missiles to detect vulnerabilities in the shields and hull of enemy ships at a moments notice. Thuranin Atomic compression warheads have a similar yield to a nuclear blast minus the fallout. This means that a direct hit with a ship killer missile is usually the end of an enemy ship. But in space combat ships need to be in "Knife fighting" range in order to use missiles as they travel at a snail's pace in comparison to MASER bolts and in space even the speed light can be slow.